An Imperfect Circle
by Orfik and Aaronica
Summary: After an emotional reunion, Jin and Hwoarang face a number of confrontations that threaten their very lives -- all on route to the fourth Ironfist Tournament. Rating subject to change later on. [In Progress]
1. The First Reunion

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Authors:
Aaronica & Orfik

Warnings:
None.

Pairing:
--

Notes:
Eee -- here it is! Both Stacy and Keiji are original characters. Prepare for a helluva ride. ^_^

Credits:
--

Archives:
Certainly, but please ask first.

**  
**"You know you're gonna be seen," Stacy noted in english with a sidelong glance at the hooded man with which she was walking.   
  
It was early in the evening, and unusually balmy, but Jin did not think to pull down the hood of his nondescript black sweatshirt. Jin glanced at her only briefly, returning the language with a shrugging tone:   
  
"There's no one looking for me now. I'm dead." Soon enough his eyes returned to roaming the streets down which they were meandering, and Stacy knew well enough the quiet, contemplative expression that was on his face, even if she couldn't directly see it. Jin had said that he needed to "get lost for a while" and Stacy insisted on going with him, to "keep him out of fool-headed trouble." He hadn't consented, but then, that had never made a difference. The short, lithe woman and the tall, thick man walked close aside one another, almost like lovers but not quite.  
  
The streets might have inspired quiet contemplation because they were the very same streets that premised a tragedy: from challenge to engagement. There was the park district further down, and the block with its line of ultra-efficient apartment buildings, neighborhood stores, and the familiar rathskeller that once witnessed the genesis of something spectacular.   
  
"I don't think I ever went around here. But I only visited Tokyo a couple times when I was living here." Stacy shrugged off her thin coat, wondering why she had even worn it as she tied it around her waist. Jin eased off to the side to dodge a renegade pedestrian, slowly pocketing his hands.   
  
"The school's within walking distance. Sometimes I would wander here after class before going home-- I ran into Joon-kun here a couple times, at the start of everything."   
  
Stacy tossed him a wry glance.   
  
"Yeah, 'just getting lost,' huh."   
  
Jin shook his head gently and protested, "No, I just now recognized everything."   
  
She grinned, amused. "Well, you woulda come here sooner or later, I b--. What?" She turned back to look perplexedly at the frozen Jin, glanced a short ways down the walk, and then back at him.   
  
Nothing much had changed about the rathskeller, and the rarely active sub-level entrance promised to hold everything it did in the past. At this juncture, believing in that promise would have been nothing short of naive; the slim, tall man advancing from the door allowed for suspension of disbelief.   
  
In a swaying, thin leather overcoat reaching his knees and matched perfectly with black slacks and a black shirt, Hwoarang seemed some sort of gloomy writer or expatriate goth. His hair, slicked back and neatly clipped along the nape of his neck, was a strange wine color; and on his neck the bold, jet-black image of a feather in torsion was inscribed. He held a bottle of something in his hand and was drinking, and began to speak to a stout figure who exited after him, the both of them loitering in front of this japanese pub.  
  
"... Is that him?" she asked. Jin said nothing, and from the way he was tensed, Stacy wasn't sure if he was on the verge of running to check or turning and fleeing.  
  
"Hey -- " Keiji exclaimed from further down the block, plucking a dangling cigarette from his lips with his fingers. Shrewd, black eyes peered over the thinner and taller man's shoulder, at Jin. " .. isn't that that guy, Ranga?"   
  
Keiji tapped Hwoarang's shoulder with his hand and pointed emphatically to prove a point, because -- not having a clue who Keiji would recognize that would be more important than the high his imported liquor promised to give him in a few minutes -- Hwoarang was slow to look. Ringed in their reddish rust, his eyes remained dull and placid as they drifted over Stacy and he started to mumble "I don't know her -- " until his gaze came across the lagging figure.  
  
He went silent, and his mouth tightened. After five seconds, he dropped the bottle, and ignored the shards of alcohol soaked glass splashing over his shoes.   
  
Keiji grinned. " .. that Mishima kid. Don't he owe us money?"   
  
Keiji had no real idea just what Jin owed.  
  
After glancing doubtfully between the immobile pair Stacy called, "Hey Hwoarang!" Jin went utterly rigid.   
  
"There's someone with him--!" he hissed, filled with too much panic to be angry. Jin did not hear anything -- not even the breaking glass -- over his own pulse in his ears, pounding like an Aboriginal drum.   
  
"Go to him, stupid," Stacy suggested. She was somewhat dismayed at Jin's paralysis, until finally the Japanese began to move, trekking a pace at a time towards Hwoarang, the journey as agonizing as the gap it was closing; the brunette followed at a distance. Jin stopped before the pair, glancing at Keiji and then staring at Hwoarang, his full mouth, cast in the light, floundering without words, and his eyes, hidden under the shadow of his hood, brimming with joy and fear and relief, and above all, love.  
  
Was that amalgamation of sentiment on his face the answer to the question that had plagued the Korean over the past two years?   
  
In that brief moment of staring into Jin's eyes with much the same paralysis and reading them, Hwoarang had to determine this. His gaze was confused, and it was bulwarked; the tension in his brow was severe, and he scarcely seemed able to breathe. With his old friend waiting for some sort of cue; Jin waiting for some sort of cue; that woman waiting for some sort of cue from Hwoarang. Hwoarang folded, and it wasn't because he was a coward.   
  
It was because he felt himself strong enough to protect himself. Speaking in a hollow tone, he gave Jin a cynical, sickly grin.   
  
"Dead men can't owe money, Keiji."   
  
Those words puzzled to an immediate reply: "Dead .. ? But I just got out the pen, Ranga, and what's the point of killin' him?"   
  
Hwoarang was still staring at Jin, and his hands were now tucked in his pockets where no one could see them tremble.   
  
"You can't kill a man that's already dead, Keiji."  
  
"Hwoarang --" Jin fumbled over the name as though suddenly unaccustomed to it, but it was swallowed regardless by Stacy's nonchalant interjection to Keiji.   
  
"They need some space. I've never been to Tokyo, why don't you show me the pub?" She tipped her head and smiled Just So. She was valiant.  
  
The bulldog of the Yurei deigned to consider. He was going to turn the offer down but --   
  
"Yeah. Go take his girlfriend for a stroll, Keiji," Hwoarang condoned. He was hardly able to hold the structure in his voice, and had to look from Jin to keep from buckling.   
  
Keiji started with uncertainty, but after staring at Hwoarang a few seconds he cut between the men. He had an 'I have no idea what's going on but we can still have a good time' smile for Stacy, and he offered his elbow.  
  
"Now what are you, Greek?"  
  
Stacy gladly slipped her arm into it, looking so small amidst the trio of men. Jin did not tell her to be careful, however; even if he had had the voice, it would have been a foolish and patronizing comment.  
  
"I'm a little bit of everything, really," she said easily towards Keiji's coarse, broken-nosed face. "If you buy me a beer I'll give you the list."   
  
When they were moving behind Hwoarang, she gestured sharply with her free hand at the small of her back, curling it into a thumbs-up for Jin.  
  
Each moment of the pair's departure was an eternity, and Jin realized only once they were out of sight that he had been holding his breath.   
  
"Joon," he whispered unevenly. He wanted to reach, and to touch and to hold. He damned the world in which they were cemented and wished he could smother Hwoarang in his arms and steal him away to their own arcadia. He blurted, quietly amazed and overjoyed, "You're here --"  
  
" .. and you. You," the Korean said with an alarming amount of calm, as he forced his eyes back to Jin. Each was animated with a struggle, but Hwoarang's lips retained their sick, flimsy curve as he pointed to his neck.   
  
"You missed your own funeral. Here's your urn." Upon closer inspection the feather was a violently fresh, black tattoo, twisted painfully in the shape of a shedding 'S' from the back base of Hwoarang's neck to the crook where throat met chin -- from point to flare -- with a sharp, serrated edge.  
  
Jin traced the tattoo with his eyes, again and again, as though if he did so long enough, the meaning he read in the marking could be replaced with one that paralleled his own hopes.   
  
"I didn't die --." He pulled his eyes onto Hwoarang's face, some of his elation withering into a more imploring tone. "I was in Australia, I just appeared there after -- Can we go somewhere? Anywhere, I don't care, I'm just so happy to see you, I have to know how you've been and tell you what happened..." His fingers were begging him for Hwoarang's shoulders.  
  
"But your girlfriend .. " Hwoarang faltered, gesturing caustically to the door. Removed from its shield of a pocket, the hand shook only slightly. Hwoarang lowered his eyes to his shoes. A diamond, invisible until it touched his jaw, revealed its wet trajectory down his cheek when he raised his face to look down the street, and artificial rays of light caught it. " .. you can't just leave her here with Keiji. He hasn't had a woman in years."  
  
"Stacy's just my friend," Jin assured quickly, invigorated by the potential opportunity. "She's not in danger, I promise. Joon..." he murmured as though the name was suddenly new and wondrous; thrilling. He moved forward, reaching to wipe away that watery trail with his coarse fingers.  
  
"You're real," Hwoarang gasped. As he was touched, he closed his eyes like a proper votary, and he soon wrapped his fingers around Jin's wrist and held on to it. The tenacity of the grip was pitiable and desperate to Hwoarang, but honest. He'd miscalculated his strength. " .. where can we hide now?" he wondered aloud.  
  
Finally free to gather and hold Hwoarang's shoulders, Jin's hands did so readily, savoringly. He pressed his cheek against the redhead's -- he'd cut his hair! -- temple and shut his eyes, inhaling the scents that Hwoarang offered, comparing them to all the ones that he remembered.   
  
"We can hide anywhere," Jin hummed, drunk with longing and affection. "No one knows I'm here but you. I'm dead to everyone else ..." 


	2. A Reasserting of Claims

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Authors:
Aaronica & Orfik

Warnings:
Limey.

Pairing:
Jin x Hwoarang

Notes:
--

Credits:
--

Archives:
--

**  
**"But when they find you again," Hwoarang whispered in dread, into the bower of fragrant throat he could so vividly remember his lips kissing, sucking in for his tongue to slide over. " .. like they always do, are you going to have to die to everything again .. ?"   
  
They were on the street, and Hwoarang conceded to the impropriety of the public display they were making, pulling away but pulling Jin with him. He didn't pause for an answer. Something about his grip on the Japanese's hand was frail, and the need so dire.   
  
The hold threatened to give out soon, and perhaps that was the reality that lead the Korean to choose such a near, public space -- a building livid with people a half block down. It was easier to hide in people. Even once they entered, Hwoarang wasn't conscious of the elaborate screens, suitcases and bag racks that hinted at the building's vocation. It was just a place, and in the lobby of this hotel, he looked around with barely contained anxiety for a place they could talk. It took a family of dusty-haired, blue-eyed tourists for recognition, and when it came the Korean squeezed Jin's hand, let it go, and went to the reservations counter.  
  
Inversely, Jin's grip on that hand was possessive and invincible, in fact just short of painful. After two years his body had suddenly grown allergic to separation and Jin was sure that to be pulled apart again, even for a moment, would mean sheer agony. He was blind to the walk, the street falling away like crude mirage and Hwoarang filling Jin's vision in its place; poring over the sight, leaving the question unanswered as he followed, assuming that he had even heard it. They were together again. There was nothing that could divide them now. When Hwoarang let go of his hand he blinked as though coming out of a lavish daze.   
  
"Let me get it," he blurted habitually, starting after Hwoarang and almost tripping over a bagboy in his haste. There was no limitless wealth backing Jin now, simply his and Stacy's careful budget, but he knew she would understand. At the very least he would follow the Korean to the counter like a giant, loyal, eager puppy.  
  
Hwoarang already had wallet in hand and was ready to tender. How he and Keiji were making their money was an interesting and nebulous thing, but from the crisp, large notes of yen the Korean handed over they seemed to have been making plenty of it. He cooled himself in Jin's words, though, comforted by that familiar etiquette embedded in the Japanese, and meeting his wayward treasure's eyes he regarded him silently as the clerk retrieved the key. He still didn't trust himself with the spoken word.  
  
A hooded sentinel standing behind Hwoarang, Jin rested his hand in the nape of Hwoarang's outer hip; he thought it felt exactly as he remembered it. As they waited for the man to fetch the key, Jin mustered enough soundness of mind and strength of voice to murmur, "I love you."   
  
He softly squeezed the flesh in his hold.  
  
Only after the clerk murmured something terse, accented by a jangle, did Hwoarang realize his eyes had closed. It confused him, because he was still seeing in vibrant, variegated modes. The sound brought him from suspension, and he reached for the keys to wrap them carefully in the heat of his palm.   
  
"We can talk," he rasped back; it was all he could say to fend of some sort of collapse -- emotional or physical. He made certain that his pace down the corridor did not displace Jin's hand, and when Hwoarang reached the door and unlocked it, he held the portal open for Jin to enter first.  
  
After Jin ducked inside the room, he immediately set to wriggling out of his sweatshirt, drawing his arms out of their sleeves and pulling the garment over his head, dropping it limply. Jin's body, hugged by a white sleeveless t-shirt as uninteresting as its former covering, would to a simple glance seem the same. But Hwoarang would undoubtedly have the easiest time of anyone spotting the differences -- the subtle reduction of his waist, further rid of its already-meager bulk, and the added definition of his shoulders and arms. Rid of his concealment he felt suddenly free in soul as well as body, as though hooded clothing served as yet another barrier between he and Hwoarang that he refused to accept any longer. Jin took Hwoarang's shoulders in his hands and gazed into his face. He wanted to talk; he had a million questions and just as many stories and explanations and excuses, all of which he had been harboring for this very moment. But first there was one impulse more vital than all the rest.   
  
"Can I kiss you?" he whispered.  
  
Two years. And Hwoarang had never loved anyone in his life as much as he loved Kazama Jin; a mother hadn't fortified him against the world; his sensei had never given him more beyond the warmth of paternal respect, obliged pity -- it was a very different love. The shroud upon shroud of black that he wore on his body hid any immediate physical changes, but in Jin's hands Hwoarang's shoulders were thicker with strength. Questions bottled up, disavowals ready, means of learning to forget: all lacked the lucidity to be articulated as the Korean placed tentative hands on the sacrosanct sides of the Japanese. His response was immediate, the false hatred harder to summon now.   
  
" .. you don't have to ask," Hwoarang's starved lips assured. "You don't ever have to ask."  
  
All of the assurances in Jin's life had withered and died but this one, and it now housed the entirety of his faith. Swallowing Hwoarang's back within the grasp of his arms, reverent, blissful kisses sizzled up Hwoarang's neck -- on the side without ink -- slipped over his jaw and finally met the wealth of his mouth. The world about Jin dissolved on impact.  
  
Abandoning his resolves in that grasp, Hwoarang's hands became reckless, scouring over and under Jin's thin shirt, across and between shoulderblades, and finally around neck. Already breathless, his mouth sought to suck air from the Japanese once they met, his tongue tumultuous and claiming as it pressed through lips. Soon there was no room for air, not in his locked arms or his consuming mouth; the pounding of his heart seemed a drum in his ears, something concrete between them.  
  
Jin uttered a soft, throaty sound, his calloused hands kneading the warm, firm muscle below them; he gave his mouth willingly to Hwoarang's explorations and gladly forfeited his breath in favor of this eternal succulence. After several honeyed moments spent languishing in their embrace, Jin pulled back suddenly, though his hands remained firm in their grips (now pressed into Hwoarang's sides just below his arms). A quiet laughter bubbled out of his faint, flushed smile. He explained, overjoyed and embarrassed, his voice soft and rushed --   
  
"It's really you. I finally have you again."  
  
Breathing hard, Hwoarang returned Jin's ebullience with a remaining disbelief, a stark apprehension. And he pulled completely from that grasp, and because he thought it might alleviate the surge of heat he felt removed the overcoat that dangled from his shoulders. With its sharp lines outlined in black, his body had thickened only slightly, with that transformation that occurs between adolescence and manhood which seemed to add more breadth and authority to the physique (real or imagined). The shirt he wore was of a cotton blend, long-sleeved and neatly tight against his chest and waist in its continuity with slacks a silver belt of square chain links needlessly adorned. The Korean's coat dropped forgotten from his hand, and he leaned against the door until his head touched the hard surface; he said in a voice without a tone:   
  
"Two years, Jin. Nothing, for two years."  
  
Jin's soft smile was powerful and slow to shrink, but within, he sobered much more quickly. His eyes which themselves puddled momentarily on the fallen coat before wandering up Hwoarang's body to the back of his russet head. He nodded slowly, even though the other wouldn't see it. He said softly, "Two years that I couldn't talk to you. As soon as I vanished I knew they'd start tracking you. I was afraid of what would happen if I tried to get to you. Afraid for you, not for me -- I didn't care if they found me, but I didn't want to give them any reason to lay a hand on you. ... Joon ..." He reached tentatively to touch Hwoarang's back.  
  
"I missed you so much. I thought you were dead. I thought he killed you." Fire. Fire. Fire. The smoking gun wasn't happy; Hwoarang was falling, descending with his accusations until he sat on the floor, his back plastered against the door, his knees drawn up and spread. He studied what lay in front of him: two solid, material legs, and he whispered in repetition.   
  
"I thought you were dead, and I died."   
  
"You're what kept me alive, Joon." Jin sank to his knees, folding his legs under himself and resting his hands on his thighs. He wanted to touch Hwoarang, to console him in his hold, but he found himself too fearful to attempt the gesture. "I didn't know anything anymore; I didn't even know myself. All I knew was I loved you, and that's what I lived for."  
  
For countless seconds, Hwoarang's body rested in silence and his gaze rested in Jin's face. He might have been reloading. Moving before he said anything, he disbanded the distance between them, rising on his knees and shifting his legs so he could wrap his arms around Jin again, and push his face into the strong, warm neck.   
  
"I needed you. I love you too much to care about what happens to me. I need you so bad, Jin."  
  
Jin bowed his face, resting his chin against Hwoarang's shoulder and hugging the slightly smaller body against his own.  
  
"I'm not running and hiding anymore. I'm here now and I'm never leaving you again." He canted his face to kiss the shell of Hwoarang's ear, squeezing closed his eyes as he burned this moment into his mind forever.  
  
"Don't ever .. " Hwoarang commanded, turning his face to the site of that kiss, finding his lips cushioned against the corner of Jin's jaw as they moved, damp heat. " .. not even to protect me! I can't take that, Jin. I don't ever want to be apart from you."   
  
Lowered hands went under the protection of shirt because Hwoarang always needed that bare, nude touch of the Japanese's skin to establish reality. His palms were clasping, desperately clutching.   
  
"I love you so fucking much it hurts," Hwoarang seethed through grit teeth.  
  
Jin's body was as warm and hard as it had been those years past, his flesh just as smooth, young, although the scars that danced lovingly down his shoulderblades were slow to fade, and their discolored reminders remained. The texture was not quite as severe as the sight.  
  
"There's nothing to keep us apart anymore." Jin was too enthralled to react to the magnitude of his own bliss. He fell back against the floor, and squeezed Hwoarang's waist with renewed vigor as he covered his face and neck with a flurry of kisses. In this moment, they were utterly invincible. 


	3. The Reclaiming

**DISCLAIMER: All featured Tekken characters are the property of Namco and not the authors. **  
  
  


Authors:
Aaronica & Orfik

Warnings:
Lemon. **PG-13/R**

Pairing:
Jin x Hwoarang

Notes:
--

Credits:
--

Archives:
--

**  
**It was in that moment atop Jin that Hwoarang carved warmth from the flurry, putting devoted definition to each line and curve of skin between the Japanese's nourishing lips and coveted neck with his tongue. He began to push the clothes from what he remembered, drawing tenuous fabric from Jin's muscled chest and arms, and coarser shielding from his legs. Hwoarang reduced Jin to stark nakedness with starving gentleness, and when there was only the black on his own body that stood between them, he suspended himself up by an arm, and ate with his eyes. A hand came to a resting stroke against Jin's jaw, as if it were less tangible than the gaze rubbing over every inch of him. The Korean's whisper defined that gaze, punctuated with breathlessness.   
  
"You're .. so .. beautiful ... "  
  
With cotton and denim piled to the side, lying naked under Hwoarang's ministrations, Jin felt as though he had returned to the one place that was home. Hwoarang was his home; the place to which Jin belonged, and the place where everything was instantly made right. He cupped that doting hand within his own and brought it to his mouth, kissing the wrist, the palm and each of the fingers. He brought it to his chest and pressed it there, against his pounding heart, his gaze resting on Hwoarang's face, as intense in its darkness as it was its love.   
  
Jin was alive more than he had ever been before. He pulled himself closer, easing onto Hwoarang, his hands eager to find and savor all of the changes that the two years had wrought on his body. They pressed into his stomach, and squeezed his chest and shoulders and arms. Dissatisfied with the clothed imitation, they pulled his shirt free from the belt to slide the cloth away and touch the genuine thing. He eased down, pressing their bodies together, his face hovering just above Hwoarang's.   
  
"You're even more perfect than I remembered."  
  
"Do you remember everything .. ?" Hwoarang asked, shrouding the naked shoulders hulking above him in his covered arms, wondering with a sincere and anxious curiosity even as he reveled in the friction of Jin's flesh on his, the rise of his shirt against his chest, clinging. His mouth touched Jin's lips, as if this would encourage and assure, because even if the Japanese didn't want to discuss what Hwoarang knew took him away, Hwoarang had to know. His right leg rose at the knee, and he dropped a hand to cup in it one perfect hemisphere of flesh, harboring Jin within him.  
  
Jin's smile was just barely not a grimace.   
  
"Yeah..." He nuzzled Hwoarang's ear and sampled his earlobe with a nibble. "We have a lot of catching up to do." Later, Jin hoped. The tip of his warm tongue trailed over the inner ring of the ear and he teased it with his balmy breath, as he meanwhile pressed his hips firmly against Hwoarang's. Some of his weight was propped on his elbows, each flat against the floor on either side of Hwoarang's chest.  
  
From the sounds of that moan, later was just fine. Hwoarang's mouth was on what he wanted to touch, and his hand on what he wanted to taste; and so his fingers mimicked a salacious lap through the divide he held, sliding back and forth over Jin's hot, wrinkled opening; and Hwoarang's lips felt out Jin's neck and face with unmediated lust.   
  
" .. a lot," he agreed in a heavy voice that came from his heart, not his throat.  
  
Jin's breath broke quietly; he rose up both to push himself against those fingers and to free the way for his fingers to seize Hwoarang's belt. They nimbly pulled it loose, following it immediately with his fly, and then finally he rose up enough to curl his fingers about the layers of cloth and shuck them off of Hwoarang. Jin felt accomplished.  
  
He kissed Hwoarang's mouth and then whispered, "Let's move to the bed."   
  
Without waiting for a reply, Hwoarang was scooped into Jin's arms and carried there, laid delicately on the smooth, freshly ironed comforter only to be covered by Jin himself.  
  
In unhindered anatomy, Hwoarang's gain and Jin's tightening seemed to have put their bodies on equivalent measures; there were still those long, muscular legs that made Hwoarang so lethal, and the solid, hard waist that imbued Jin with an almost supernatural fortitude, but they were fit to one another like molds tempered over time to hold true forever.   
  
Despite being prone and impassioned, the Korean reached for and locked himself around the Japanese, burying his face in Jin's neck. It was a tight, pressured embrace, and with his legs winding around the body on his, Hwoarang seemed to lose all other desires at that moment: nothing was more important than this.  
  
Jin was unsure whether or not it was the tightness of the hold that made him hold his breath, but either way, a heady, wonderful feeling settled over him. He gathered Hwoarang's back in his arms again and mirrored his cling, squeezing his eyes closed as he buried his nose and mouth into the welcoming flames of hair, sucking in their perfume. The smell returned a history memories, laden with a void that at this moment just came to an end.   
  
"I love you," Hwoarang said again, because such words could never be said enough to accurately reflect the sentiments in his being.   
  
There was only breathing and heartbeats struggling together, and then in an instant there were Hwoarang's possessive hands stroking Jin's back, reassuring himself of the reality. He loosened his thighs slightly, the part allowing Jin in even more firmly. Some unfinished utterance of sound left the redhead's upturned mouth as the waves of contact trickled through him. He could never imagine anyone else doing this to him but Jin.   
  
Ever.  
  
As Hwoarang's body opened to his, Jin swallowed every inch of offered space, sinking almost languidly down against him as he caught his footing on the bed, spreading his own knees to part Hwoarang's even further. A thick, humid voice trailed from his throat before he reopened his gaze. He needed to make up for those lost years; he needed to give Hwoarang all of the tender, devoted looks that he had been forced to harbor. He would not shut his eyes again in the face of this pure and concrete bliss.   
  
"I love you... Joon," he said almost without breath, his shoulders and arms tensing as he urged himself forward, joining them to the core.  
  
The air catching in Hwoarang's throat erupted, touching every corner of the room. Thereafter, in silence, his brows clenched with the same tightness that the neglected, ravenous place of entry did. Clenched teeth refused words and gasps laced with the pain that seared through Hwoarang, because he knew he wanted it this way; he needed to feel Jin inside him again with the intense, tearing and spasming pain of remembrance -- any easier way would have been artificial.  
  
Jin's gaze was soft but unwavering on Hwoarang's face, although the swell of sensation with him -- racing from the center of his being to seemingly the tips of his fingers and toes -- came dangerously close to breaking his sight once again. He licked his lips, halting to give both of them time to find air, and continuously tensed himself within the long-dormant opening. The lubrication his own body offered would ease the harshness of their connection soon enough. He eased back gradually and delicately, helping to smear the fluid further as his mouth doted again on Hwoarang's ear, suckling and tickling with whispery moans and litanies.  
  
It was narrow, more constricting; it never wanted to let Jin go again. The gradual ease induced Hwoarang to breathe again, and as Jin's careful urgings pushed against him with growing repetition, Hwoarang's elbows bent around the Japanese's neck in full, and he sought to share himself with Jin's mouth at the same time. Each hard kiss was random, torn away by some sudden moan but never totally dislodged, never letting up a steady steam of air on Jin's lips, chin and jaw. When Jin glazed himself over a private and intimate nexus deep in Hwoarang he yelled. Loudly.  
  
Jin stole the sound in the vacuum of a kiss, hard and all-engrossing. Now that he had found that most private region, he would thoughtfully and unrelentingly ravage that territory to drive Hwoarang to the brink along with him. As he felt the first hints of defeat in the diligent barrier, his long, even thrusts grew shorter and more frequent, the humming current of pleasure condensing and intensifying, an outright electric force possessed each of their most sensitive hubs.  
  
Hwoarang wanted to wait, but he couldn't. He had waited for so long, and now he could not check the deluge of ecstatic moans, paroxysms and tears. Wave after wave came while he locked his hands around Jin to keep from drowning in the forming ocean. The sudden burst of damp and sticky hot between their fused bellies only weakened the Korean for seconds; he was soon pressing himself back against Jin, his glassy eyes opened, his face as flushed as his open lips.  
  
Jin buried his face in Hwoarang's sweaty neck, panting against it as he pistoned himself towards his own release. He cooed something hoarse between his shallow breaths, drunk on the thick, sweaty heat that radiated from Hwoarang. He was overcome in a warm, blinding flash, crying out before he was swallowed by a raging tide, frothy bullets holding him captive as they were forged and pounded out of him; but once they had all gone ahead he followed them, shivering, penetrating weakly until he was finally forced to admit defeat, hastily propping himself on his arms so that he brunt of his limp weight wouldn't fall on Hwoarang.  
  
Hwoarang wanted the weight; he wanted everything. So he pulled Jin down atop him, encountering little resistance in the other's spent body.   
  
Pressed into the bed, Hwoarang whispered into Jin's ear, " .. stay inside me."   
  
He still breathed in irregular bouts, and his heart mirrored a hummingbird's frantic resolutions, but he drew a calm from the mass securing him down.  
  
The frantic pulse of the body beneath the Korean was so like his own, and the passionate chaos was ebbing into serenity.   
  
"I don't ever want to leave," Jin replied towards the mattress, and cracked an dazed, genuine smile. He turned his face enough to kiss Hwoarang's neck, and it was good that his eyes had already drifted shut, because he would have been dismayed to find the tattoo beneath his lips. He pulled an arm to life long enough to find one of Hwoarang's; he unfolded it, trailed his fingers over bicep and elbow and forearm and wrist, and then mingled their fingers in a soft but secure hold, content.  
  
Hwoarang's soft spikes of burgundy hair still gleamed, but each strand was slickened with slight damp, and veered away from his face. In the interstice between afterglow and slumber the countenance revealed an alarming clarity; a solid resolve; and for minutes he watched Jin fall asleep, felt him soften inside him. There was a sudden spark in burnt sienna eyes, dangerous and touched with a mild irrationality. It sought to wield Jin to him like metal to metal, before lashes lowered to cover it. 


End file.
